The joy of celebrating Christmas is there. All around the globe in almost every culture, the birth of the Savior, Jesus-Christ will be celebrated in different ways.

Just as Jesus came with the purpose of reconciling a fallen humanity with God, and He worked hard to make it happen, we should follow His example to live a fulfilled life through Him.

As we enjoy festivities, one should not forget that life is also about creating values to bring change in others life. Those values come from a vision to improve your life or others life through established goals you will pursue with hard work and persistence.

I wrote this article very short to give you enough time to celebrate Christmas with your beloved one and I would like you to answer these 7 simple questions that could help you focus your coming year on priorities.

These questions are driven by proven methods I developed last year in one of my articles. Answers to these questions covers 7 key aspects of your life on which you could invest to reach new heights.

Know your Strengths

Question: Do you remember key decisions you made in 2017 and the actions taken to realize them? Write down the expected results and the real one.

Know how you perform

Question: Do you learn easily by reading or by listening? Do you know how you work? What are your values?

Know where you belong

Question: Are you a leader or a follower? Do you enjoy working alone or in the group? How do you feel when you work with small groups or large groups?

Know what your contribution is

Question: Could you write down 2-4 situations you know you will face in 2018? It could be: finding a new job, having a career promotion or change, getting married, live abroad for 6 months to develop new skills.

Understand Relationship Responsibility

Question: What are you going to do to understand people around you?

The Challenge of the Second Half of Your Life

Question: Do you volunteer for an NGO in your community? Could you pick another job, a weekend or part-time one ?

The Power of Managing Oneself

Question: How could you track your progress on your personal management growth? Are you ready to make some adjustment to become the best version of yourself?

If you have other questions you ask yourself to find answers that could help you succeed, please share with me. I would be glad to learn from you.

Like this:

The purpose of this book is to present various results of qualitative studies on cross-cultural challenges that are influencing the new world shape of the beginning of the 21st century. The content of this book generate information to provide some direction in the midst of a multicultural milieu.

The book is divided into two parts. The first one focuses on leadership and management challenges while the second part emphasizes on specific case studies based on observations in various types of organizations across three countries.

There has never been an attempt to write a book or a guide on cross-culture. It has always been about understanding better ways to succeed in a multicultural milieu whether as a student, a graduate or a young professional.

Everything in this book is life related. As with many qualitative contents, it provides direction and answers the questions “why” and “how”?

The effort to avoid academic style and still remain logical in my saying is a big deal in this book. I position myself as the expert of my document. Every observation came from what I learned with experiences that produced the expected or unexpected results.

We are in the first quarter of the 21st century and by 2030 we should be able to evaluate at the global level the impact of all the predictions and studies on the success of globalization of businesses. I remain convinced that by conducting further studies on the areas raised in this book, we could have better multicultural environment at workplaces.

As the reader will notice, I focused on specific areas such as leadership, management, language, communication, cultural shocks and global mobility. I know there could be much to say on cross-culture but I am sure what I am saying in this little book is worthy enough to ignite a change at the individual and organizations level.

Like this:

“I believe in the power of storytelling. Stories open our hearts to a new place, which opens our minds, which often leads to action.” Melinda Gates

The goal of this article is to bring attention to the need of 21st century leaders and managers adapted to the challenges of Globalization. This is not an academic argumentative with a lot of statistics and general conclusions. It is rather an attempt to demonstrate the relevance of cross-cultural challenges based on storytelling.

Most examples are driven from observations with almost 10 different organizations including Churches, NGO, Schools, Business Companies in 3 countries known for their cultural diversity: Cameroon, Uganda and America. Therefore the ideas developed in this content could be tested in any other organization in a multicultural milieu.

The 21st century leader/manager has to demonstrate new skills in other to successfully provide quality direction to a team that is more and more diverse and complex.

In several organizations (Schools, Hospitals, Churches, Warehouses, etc…) there is an increasing number of people from different cultural background who have in common the required skills to grow the business. The ultimate goal of every one is to make enough satisfactory earning to prosper while contributing to the company’s growth.

In this context, leadership could be very challenging mostly if the company is not prepared to solve the problems that rise in the cross-cultural milieu. The obvious results are a lot of wasted time and money in addition to negative discrimination that could be avoided if little knowledge about cross-culture was added to the leader’s curriculum.

I met a manager who said something quite interesting. I wish every leader does this simple activity. Every time this manager travels in a new country, she reads the book “When Cultures Collide-Leading Across Cultures” -by Richard D. Lewis- on the plane to learn a little bit about the culture. She always has the book with her, even in her office.

What if the 21st century leader takes some few minutes every day to read about the cultural diversity of his team members?

For example, learning how to say “good morning” in one of your staff languages could make him feel accepted and more efficient than your think. Duplicating this for each of your team members could seem meaningless but this is the perfect image of who the current leader is supposed to be.

On the other hand, working in a company for 2 years and being asked one day by your boss “where are you from again?” could be the most frustrating experience one goes through.

Could you share your experience of working across cultures and how it shaped your skills as a cross-cultural leader?